Medicine: Insurance for the Nation's Health

We have left undone those things which we ought to have done . . .And
there is no health in us.

Book of Common Prayer

WHAT the people of the U.S. ought to have done may be debatable in many
areas and in many details. What has been most conspicuously left undone
involves health. As long ago as 1883, Iron Chancellor Otto von Bismarck
(who could hardly be called socialistic or radical) gave Imperial
Germany the world's first Sickness Insurance Act, covering workers and
their families. Similar benefits now protect the people of virtually...